Jailbreaking iOS 6.1, Evasi0n rocks!

Team Evad3rs, Saurik and the rest do it again,

Well, let's see, last month I wrote about upgrading my Android Touchpad to Jelly Bean. Last week I updated my PCs to Windows 8 and Office 2013 365. This week I got to jailbreak my iPhone 4S with the latest jailbreak released by Team Evad3rs called Evasi0n. As someone who has been jailbreaking iPhones a long time, this was perhaps the easiest tool since the "jailbreakme" website a while back. As usual, the jailbreak community has done a great job of giving us a jailbreak that works, is easy to understand, and makes all of the apps we already use work seamlessly.

Of course, by now you have probably read that the team behind this latest jailbreak is made up of some jailbreaking legends: Pimskek, Planetbeing, Pod2g and MuscleNerd. They have probably been sitting on this jailbreak for a while now and were just waiting for Apple to release version 6.1 of iOS, so that it would be some time before Apple could close the exploit that allowed for the jailbreak. Right after Apple released 6.1, within days Evasi0n is released. Unlike past jailbreaks, this one was released on Apple, Windows, and Linux all at the same time. 

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Making it available to everyone at once just about crashed Saurik's Cydia system, but it seems to be back up and running today. Actually, kudos to Saurik and the rest of the jailbreak community for making using jailbroken apps such a breeze. 

For a great breakdown of how the Evasi0n jailbreak actually works, my friend Michael Farnum and the Accuvant Labs team have a great blog article up giving the details here. The good news is unless you are curious, you don't need to know. Run the program, follow the on-screen instructions, which are minimal, and presto, you are jailbroken. While looking at the on-screen instructions and if you appreciate the great work these guys do, you can click the link to Paypal and make a donation to them.

For me, this was the longest I have ever waited for a jailbreak. I have an iPhone 4S (I didn't even activate it until the jailbreak for iOS 5 came out) and never bothered upgrading to iOS 6 because it would mean losing my jailbreak. So I waited patiently all of these months until yesterday. Frankly, it wasn't that hard. There is little in iOS 6 that I can see I missed.

I downloaded the Google maps app instead of the native Apple maps app pretty much right away. In terms of jailbroken apps, I like my MyWi, which I upgraded to version 6 (cost an extra $4.99). I also upgraded to version 6 of IntelliScreenX (another $4.99 for the upgrade), My3G, iFile, Cyntact, Infiniboard, Infinidock, and MyWi on Demand. All upgraded and worked like a charm.

What was also nice was that even though I had upgraded to iOS 6.1 before jailbreaking and lost all my folders and such, once I jailbroke, my old configuration was restored and everything was back in its place. I tell you, many a company can learn a thing or two about a smooth upgrade from the jailbreak team and the Cydia folks. 

Of course, now I am pretty set, at least until the next iPhone comes out, which will probably be the iPhone 5S. I should be eligible for a cheap upgrade by then, and I will buy it. It will stay in its box until the jailbreak for whatever iOS that phone will run is released.

In the meantime, all is good in my world. My Touchpad runs Jelly Bean, my computers run Windows 8, and my phone is running iOS 6.1 jailbroken.  Life is good!

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